15 August 2008

Birthday socks that don't fit

When we went to Panteria in May, Cait saw some striped knee-high socks she wanted. Unfortunately, we had spent the last of our money (and then some due to miscalculating on my part), but I mentioned she had a birthday coming up. She said she would like some in pink and army green. So I bought the yarn for these socks and attempted to get an entire pair of knee high socks knitted in secret in 2 weeks. I got one done and gave it to her on her birthday, promising to get the second one done as soon as I took a breather. She tried on the sock and the foot fit fine, but I had added too much for her calf (she doesn't exactly have curvy legs, my little bean pole) so it kept sliding down her leg. I made the second one up with this in mind. When it came off the needles, she tried it on and loved the fit. So I ripped the leg down on the first one and re-knit it to match the second one. I finished the first one again and told her to get the second one so we could see how they looked together. But she had washed the second one, so it shrank. My lesson: Only use sock yarn for socks. She finally pulled it on and of course the first one now fit well but was bigger than the second one. I suggested she wash the first so they would both be shrunk the same and we would see how hard it would be for her to wear them. Getting one sock on after that was a 5 minute ordeal. Sadly, we had Lauren try them on, and they fit Laurne like a charm. I only used half of the yarn I bought for the socks, so I have two choices: I can either knit them up again, but larger to allow for shrinking, or I can buy new sock yarn and knit them in the same size, and find some other project for the Knit Picks Pallette yarn. The colors are Petal and Clover. Christmas is coming up and I want to start knitting on all those projects so I have a hope of getting them done on time, but I want to replace Cait's sock, since that means she now has no birthday present.

1 comment:

SwetPMnkyGrl said...

Try the Essential Knit Picks sock yarn. It's superwash merino wool and won't shrink as badly (washing palette causes it to felt and shrinks it more and more everytime you wash).